Wu Ting
How would you explain ‘shellery’ in the context? Just before the border were pecan orchards, dark blocks of trees with their boughs half bright and half shadowed, lit by the electric lights of the shelleries. People working there in the dead of night, New Year’s morning. The train sighed and stopped at the border, waiting for the customs agents to arrive at their offices. The whitening sky showed a thin stretch of river with dogs skulking along its shores, their up-curved tails reflected on the gray surface. The riverbank is a dumping ground: planks and metal, flaps of tarred paper. At daybreak children began walking from the scrap piles, not a dumping ground after all but a terrible kind of city. Women came out of the shacks too, and last the men, straightening to unfold themselves, placing both hands against their backs, shifting their trousers and pissing in the ditches. Squatting to splash their faces at the river’s edge. How would you explain ‘shellery’ in the first sentence:.. lit by the electric lights of the shelleries?
Feb 26, 2014 4:11 AM
Answers · 4
1
I haven't seen this word before and its not in dictionaries. Its a common word so we can break the word down to its basic components to figure out what it means. We have the root word 'shell' and the suffix '-ery'. This suffix when added to a word can mean that a shellery is a place where shells are stored, or where shells are made. Like a bakery is a place where things are baked, and a distillery is a place where alcohol is made. And since there are 'electric lights of the shelleries', I think that a shellery is most likely a physical place, a building of some sort to do with some kind of shells. This is not a common word.
February 26, 2014
1
What a cool word! I'm not familiar with it, but I would guess that it refers to factories where shells (an exploding projectile for large guns) were manufactured. I'm guessing your book is about World War I. I hope someone else has a more definitive answer.
February 26, 2014
Gordon, which book are you reading now?
February 26, 2014
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